Commodity Best Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Commodity Best. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.
René Descartes (Discourse on Method)
Men live by rules they've made for themselves. And among those rules is one specifying that women are merely commodities for men to possess. A daughter belongs to her father, a wife to her husband. A woman's own desires present obstacles for men and are best ignored.
Natsuo Kirino (Grotesque)
Anything worthwhile takes time. Maybe that's what time is for: to give meaning to the things we do; to create a context in which we can linger in something until, finally, we have given it something invaluable, something that we can never get back: time. And once we've invested the most precious commodity that we will ever have, it suddenly has meaning and importance. So maybe time is just how we measure meaning. Maybe time is how we best measure love.
Jason Mott (Hell of a Book)
Contrary to popular opinion, manners are not a luxury good that's interesting only to those who can afford to think about them. The essence of good manners is not exclusivity, nor exclusion of any kind, but sensitivity. To practice good manners is to confer upon others not just consideration but esteem; it's to bathe others in a commodity best described by noted speller Aretha Franklin.
Henry Alford (Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That? A Modern Guide to Manners)
The most advertised commodity is not always intrinsically the best; but is sometimes merely the product of a company, with plenty of money to spend on advertising.
Emily Post
Intelligence is the only indispensable commodity in life or in warfare. If you think otherwise, go live in a hut with a poet. The rest of us will do our best to defend you.
Dorothy Dunnett (The Ringed Castle (The Lymond Chronicles, #5))
talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
American culture is a sheep culture—long on talk about individualism, but even longer on absolute conformity. Most still believe that individuality is based on which model car you like best—commodity identity, a selection of personalities on a shelf full of products approved by the Federal Identity Administration. I’m a Taurus aspiring to be a Lexus.
Stan Goff (Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century)
Would-be green capitalism is nothing but a publicity stunt, a label for the purpose of selling a commodity, or - in the best of cases - a local initiative equivalent to a drop of water on the arid soil of the capitalist desert.
Michael Löwy (Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe)
It's odd how we prioritize the things the things that matter to us. We choose a career or job; we choose a city or place to live. We make so many things important to us, but in all the things we factor in as we craft our futures, we make the people in our lives a commodity of, at best, secondary importance. We would take a job and give up our people rather than choose a tribe and give up the job.
Erwin Raphael McManus (The Last Arrow: Save Nothing for the Next Life)
Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Modern man's happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He (or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl—and for the woman an attractive man—are the prizes they are after. 'Attractive' usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and sexy, was attractive; today the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of this century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious—today he has to be social and tolerant—in order to be an attractive 'package'. At any rate, the sense of falling in love develops usually only with regard to such human commodities as are within reach of one's own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should want me, considering my overt and hidden assets and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market.
Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)
I should understand the land, not as a commodity, an inert fact to be taken for granted, but as an ultimate value, enduring and alive, useful and beautiful and mysterious and formidable and comforting, beneficent and terribly demanding, worthy of the best of man's attention and care... [My father] insisted that I learn to do the hand labor that the land required, knowing--and saying again and again--that the ability to do such work is the source of a confidence and an independence of character that can come no other way, not by money, not by education.
Wendell Berry (The Hidden Wound)
Be glad they didn’t take you,” I told him. “You were better off.” “I doubt that.” “I don’t. You don’t know what it’s like, growing up around a bunch of people who treat you like an inferior, who see you only as a commodity to be used, who couldn’t give a shit about you unless you’re benefitting them in some way. . . .” I stopped, biting my lip. “You’d have tried to fit in, done your best to learn about them, to be one of them. But it would never have worked. You’d have always felt like what you were—an outsider. Because you’re not like them. You’re not . . . like anybody.” I looked up to see his face swimming in front of me. “Be glad they didn’t take you!” “Someone in your life was stupid, too,” he told me. And then he kissed me.
Karen Chance
Charlotte smiled. She collected rumors the way some girls liked to accumulate dolls, recording the juicier details into a small notebook she kept. (Rumors were the only commodity that Lowood had in spades.) If the rumor were good enough, perhaps she'd compose a story about it later, to tell to her sisters at bedtime. But the death of Mr. Brocklehurst was much better than mere gossip passed around by a gaggle of teenage girls. It was a genuine, bona fide mystery. The very best kind of story.
Cynthia Hand (My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies, #2))
The best commodity to invest in is still – people.
Sneha Mehta
One can best describe the culture of consumerism as the unbridled consumption of commodities for the satisfaction of psychological needs that cannot be satisfied through the practice of consumption
Jacob M. Held (Dr. Seuss and Philosophy: Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!)
Dear Papa, it seemed, had not left his family in affluent circumstances; but he had certainly endowed them with good looks, a commodity in which they had been bred from earliest youth to trade to the best advantage.
Georgette Heyer (Cotillion)
Time. Now here is a peculiar commodity, boy. The measurement of time. Best accomplished, obviously, with a watch. But, lacking a watch, a man may use instead the ebb and flow of light and dark. Lacking, however, a window through which to see such movement, the reliance must be devolved upon some inner mechanism of the mind. But if the mind has received a shock, the mechanism is disturbed, and time becomes as the ground is to a drunkard, variable.
Robert Harris (Archangel)
Others argue that the lack of salt in Florentine bread is because unsalted bread lasts longer, or it’s the result of an innate or inherited Tuscan parsimony stemming from a time when Italy was divided into city-states and wars were fought over necessary and coveted commodities such as salt, which was very dear. When we lived in Florence we never could get used to the unsalted bread, which we found dry and tasteless. I must confess that sometimes I think the best bread in Italy is in France.
Stanley Tucci (Taste: My Life Through Food)
The followers of Jesus, though, did not kill their offspring, even when it would have made economic or social sense to do so.6 This is still distinctively Christian in a world that increasingly sees children as, at best, a commodity to be controlled and, at worst, a nuisance to be contained.
Russell D. Moore (Adoption: What Joseph of Nazareth Can Teach Us about This Countercultural Choice)
It made economic sense, if you looked at it from the right angle; it was not in the Clan’s interest for the price of the commodity they shifted to drop—and drop it surely would, if it was legalized or if the pressure to keep up the war on drugs ever slackened. But for Mike Fleming, who’d willingly given the best years of his life to the DEA, it was a deeply unsettling idea; nauseating, even. Bought and sold: We’re doing the dealers’ work for them, keeping prices high.
Charles Stross (The Revolution Business (The Merchant Princes, #5))
Aldo Leopold had a dream. He dreamt of a time when people accepted their roles as citizens of the natural world rather than its conquerors, a time when the land was not viewed as a commodity to be exploited but as the source of our continued existence. He longed for a time when people appreciated and respected wilderness, not just as a hunting ground or a recreational playground, but as a truly awesome and unimaginably complex machine that required all of its parts to function well.
Douglas W. Tallamy (Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard)
What we feel and how we feel is far more important than what we think and how we think. Feeling is the stuff of which our consciousness is made, the atmosphere in which all our thinking and all our conduct is bathed. All the motives which govern and drive our lives are emotional. Love and hate, anger and fear, curiosity and joy are the springs of all that is most noble and most detestable in the history of men and nations. The opening sentence of a sermon is an opportunity. A good introduction arrests me. It handcuffs me and drags me before the sermon, where I stand and hear a Word that makes me both tremble and rejoice. The best sermon introductions also engage the listener immediately. It’s a rare sermon, however, that suffers because of a good introduction. Mysteries beg for answers. People’s natural curiosity will entice them to stay tuned until the puzzle is solved. Any sentence that points out incongruity, contradiction, paradox, or irony will do. Talk about what people care about. Begin writing an introduction by asking, “Will my listeners care about this?” (Not, “Why should they care about this?”) Stepping into the pulpit calmly and scanning the congregation to the count of five can have a remarkable effect on preacher and congregation alike. It is as if you are saying, “I’m about to preach the Word of God. I want all of you settled. I’m not going to begin, in fact, until I have your complete attention.” No sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal. The getting of that sentence is the hardest, most exacting, and most fruitful labor of study. We tend to use generalities for compelling reasons. Specifics often take research and extra thought, precious commodities to a pastor. Generalities are safe. We can’t help but use generalities when we can’t remember details of a story or when we want anonymity for someone. Still, the more specific their language, the better speakers communicate. I used to balk at spending a large amount of time on a story, because I wanted to get to the point. Now I realize the story gets the point across better than my declarative statements. Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. Limits—that is, form—challenge the mind, forcing creativity. Needless words weaken our offense. Listening to some speakers, you have to sift hundreds of gallons of water to get one speck of gold. If the sermon is so complicated that it needs a summary, its problems run deeper than the conclusion. The last sentence of a sermon already has authority; when the last sentence is Scripture, this is even more true. No matter what our tone or approach, we are wise to craft the conclusion carefully. In fact, given the crisis and opportunity that the conclusion presents—remember, it will likely be people’s lasting memory of the message—it’s probably a good practice to write out the conclusion, regardless of how much of the rest of the sermon is written. It is you who preaches Christ. And you will preach Christ a little differently than any other preacher. Not to do so is to deny your God-given uniqueness. Aim for clarity first. Beauty and eloquence should be added to make things even more clear, not more impressive. I’ll have not praise nor time for those who suppose that writing comes by some divine gift, some madness, some overflow of feeling. I’m especially grim on Christians who enter the field blithely unprepared and literarily innocent of any hard work—as though the substance of their message forgives the failure of its form.
Mark Galli (Preaching that Connects)
XXV. Is it not a cruel thing to forbid men to affect those things, which they conceive to agree best with their own natures, and to tend most to their own proper good and behoof? But thou after a sort deniest them this liberty, as often as thou art angry with them for their sins. For surely they are led unto those sins whatsoever they be, as to their proper good and commodity. But it is not so (thou wilt object perchance). Thou therefore teach them better, and make it appear unto them: but be not thou angry with them.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
To be sure, we can buy art, but we sense that if it is mere commodity, we pay too much; and if it is true art, we pay infinitely too little. Similarly, we can buy sex but not love; we can buy calories but not real nourishment. Today we suffer a poverty of immesurable things, priceless things; a poverty of the things that money cannot buy and a surfeit of the things it can (though this surfeit is so unequally distributed that many suffer a poverty of those things, too). Just as money homogenizes the things it touches, so also does it homogenize and depersonalize its users: "It facilitates the kind of commercial exchange that is disembedded from all other relations." In other words, people become mere parties to a transaction. In contrast to the diverse motivations that characterize the giving and receiving of gifts, in a pure financial transaction we are all identical: we all want to get the best deal. The homegeneity among human beings that is an effect of money is assumed by economics to be a cause. The whole story of money's evolution from barter assumes that it is fundamental human nature to want to maximize self-interest. In this, human beings are assumed to be identical. When there is no standard of value, different humans want different things. When money is exchangeable for any thing, then all people want the same thing: money.
Charles Eisenstein (Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition)
Ten years ago a book appeared in France called D'Une foi l'autre, les conversions a l'Islam en Occident. The authors, both career journalists, carried out extensive interviews with new Muslims in Europe and America. Their conclusions are clear. Almost all educated converts to Islam come in through the door of Islamic spirituality. In the middle ages, the Sufi tariqas were the only effective engine of Islamisation in Muslim minority areas like Central Asia, India, black Africa and Java; and that pattern is maintained today. Why should this be the case? Well, any new Muslim can tell you the answer. Westerners are in the first instance seeking not a moral path, or a political ideology, or a sense of special identity - these being the three commodities on offer among the established Islamic movements. They lack one thing, and they know it - the spiritual life. Thus, handing the average educated Westerner a book by Sayyid Qutb, for instance, or Mawdudi, is likely to have no effect, and may even provoke a revulsion. But hand him or her a collection of Islamic spiritual poetry, and the reaction will be immediately more positive. It is an extraordinary fact that the best-selling religious poet in modern America is our very own Jalal al-Din Rumi. Despite the immeasurably different time and place of his origin, he outsells every Christian religious poet. Islam and the New Millennium
Abdal Hakim Murad
The gifts we received from the dead: those were the world's only genuine gifts. All other things in the world were commodities. The dead were, by definition, those who gave to us without reward. And, especially: our dead gave to us, the living, within a dead context. Their gifts to us were not just abjectly generous, but archaic and profoundly confusing. Whenever we disciplined ourselves, in some vague hope of benefiting posterity, in some ambition to create a better future beyond our own moment in time, then we were doing something beyond a rational analysis. Those in that future could never see us with our own eyes: they would see us only with the eyes that we ourselves gave to them. Never our own eyes: always with their own. And the future's eyes always saw the truths of the past as blinkered, backward, halting. Superstition.
Bruce Sterling (The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection)
A greater and more ruinous mistake cannot be fallen into, than that the trades of agriculture and grazing can be conducted upon any other than the common principles of commerce; namely, that the producer should be permitted, and even expected, to look to all possible profit which, without fraud or violence, he can make; to turn plenty or scarcity to the best advantage he can; to keep back or to bring forward his commodities at his pleasure; to account to no one for his stock or for his gain. On any other terms he is the slave of the consumer; and that he should be so is of no benefit to the consumer. No slave was ever so beneficial to the master as a freeman that deals with him on an equal footing by convention, formed on the rules and principles of contending interests and compromised advantages. [Thoughts and Details on Scarcity]
Edmund Burke
In a seminal 1981 paper, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked out the mathematics behind these “winner-take-all” markets. One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best. Even if the talent advantage of the best is small compared to the next rung down on the skill ladder, the superstars still win the bulk of the market.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
difference, as we have seen in the preceding chapter. In a competitive market economy it is the high-cost producers, the inefficient producers, that are driven out by a fall in price. In the case of an agricultural commodity it is the least competent farmers, or those with the poorest equipment, or those working the poorest land, that are driven out. The most capable farmers on the best land do not have to restrict their production. On the contrary, if the fall in price has been symptomatic of a lower average cost of production, reflected through an increased supply, then the driving out of the marginal farmers on the marginal land enables the good farmers on the good land to expand their production. So there may be, in the long run, no reduction whatever in the output of that commodity. And the product is then produced and sold at a permanently lower price. If
Henry Hazlitt (Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics)
For some years, Trieste was a murky exchange for the commodities most coveted in the deprived societies of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia. Jeans, for example, were then almost a currency of their own, so terrific was the demand on the other side of the line, and the trestle tables of the Ponterosso market groaned with blue denims of dubious origin ("Jeans Best for Hammering, Pressing and Screwing", said a label I noted on one pair). There was a thriving traffic in everything profitably resellable, smuggleable or black-marketable - currencies, stamps, electronics, gold. Not far from the Ponterosso market was Darwil's, a five-storey jewellers' shop famous among gold speculators throughout central Europe. Dazzling were its lights, deafening was its rock music, and through its blinding salons clutches of thick-set conspiratorial men muttered and wandered, inspecting lockets through eye-glasses, stashing away watches in suitcases, or coldly watching the weighing of gold chains in infinitesimal scales.
Jan Morris (Trieste and The Meaning of Nowhere)
The social system of capital separates most people from the conditions of existence. This compels the vast majority to accept the mediations of work and commodity consumption in order to maintain a minimal existence at the expense of their lives, desires and dreams, of their individuality. The artificial economic scarcity imposed by capital leads to a competition that is often promoted in the United States as the basis of "individualism" in spite of the fact that it creates nearly identical mediocre existences in which life is subsumed in survival... If all individuals are indeed to be free to create their lives and relations as they desire, it is necessary to create a world in which equality of access to the means and conditions of existence is reality. This requires the total destruction of economy—the end of property, commodity exchange and work. Thus we see that the generalized realization of individual freedom goes hand-in-hands with the best aspects of the anarcho-communist ideal and can only be achieved through a revolutionary transformation.
Wolfi Landstreicher Individualism and Communism
The damned alarm went off in the middle of the hottest fuck Nick had ever had. He came up out of the dream roaring like an angry bear and practically slapped the clock off the nightstand in his efforts to shut it off. There was no going back to sleep, not with his heart hammering and his dick stretching out between his legs like it owned the place. Cursing between his teeth, he stumbled to the bathroom with only one eye half open. Not bothering with the stop at the commode for the piss he knew he couldn’t manage as hard as he was, he shoved his way into the shower and cranked the hot water. No cold showers this morning. He had every intention of giving this dream a good send-off. For a minute he leant against the wall, letting the jets from the shower massage work their magic. Then, when he was nice and wet, he soaped up, still not bothering to open his eyes, still doing his best to capture the vivid images from his dream. Once his chest and armpits, lower back and arse were well lathered, he went to work where he needed it most. And when his pubes felt like they were mounded in thick whipped cream, he closed his fist around his sudsy hard-on and began to stroke, letting the dream flood full-on back into his head.
K.D. Grace (Fulfilling the Contract)
We might label this the Hobbesean fallacy: the idea that human beings were primordially individualistic and that they entered into society at a later stage in their development only as a result of a rational calculation that social cooperation was the best way for them to achieve their individual ends. This premise of primordial individualism underpins the understanding of rights contained in the American Declaration of Independence and thus of the democratic political community that springs from it. This premise also underlies contemporary neoclassical economics, which builds its models on the assumption that human beings are rational beings who want to maximize their individual utility or incomes. But it is in fact individualism and not sociability that developed over the course of human history. That individualism seems today like a solid core of our economic and political behavior is only because we have developed institutions that override our more naturally communal instincts. Aristotle was more correct than these early modern liberal theorists when he said that human beings were political by nature. So while an individualistic understanding of human motivation may help to explain the activities of commodity traders and libertarian activists in present-day America, it is not the most helpful way to understand the early evolution of human politics. Everything
Francis Fukuyama (The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution)
It does not require much wisdom to trace every war back to a similar cause. Let us take our own Spanish-American war, supposedly a great and patriotic event in the history of the United States. How our hearts burned with indignation against the atrocious Spaniards! True, our indignation did not flare up spontaneously. It was nurtured by months of newspaper agitation, and long after Butcher Weyler had killed off many noble Cubans and outraged many Cuban women. Still, in justice to the American Nation be it said, it did grow indignant and was willing to fight, and that it fought bravely. But when the smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities and rent—that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree—it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war was the consideration of the price of sugar; or, to be more explicit, that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of American capitalists, which were threatened by the Spanish government. That this is not an exaggeration, but is based on absolute facts and figures, is best proven by the attitude of the American government to Cuban labor. When Cuba was firmly in the clutches of the United States, the very soldiers sent to liberate Cuba were ordered to shoot Cuban workingmen during the great cigarmakers' strike, which took place shortly after the war.
Emma Goldman (Anarchism and other essays (Illustrated))
One day, at a quiet hour, I found myself alone in a certain gallery, wherein one particular picture of pretentious size set up in the best light, having a cordon of protection stretched before it, and a cushioned bench duly set in front for the accommodation of worshipping connoisseurs, who, having gazed themselves off their feet, might be fain to complete the business sitting. This picture, I say, seemed to consider itself the queen of the collection. It represented a woman, considerably larger, I thought, than the life. I calculated that this lady, put into a scale of magnitude suitable for the reception of a commodity of bulk, would infallibly turn from fourteen to sixteen stone. She was indeed extremely well fed, very much butcher's meat, to say nothing of bread, vegetables, and liquids must she have consumed to attain that breadth and height, that wealth of muscle, that affluence of flesh. She lay half reclined on a couch – why, it would be difficult to say. Broad daylight blazed round her. She appeared in hearty health, strong enough to do the work of two plain cooks. She could not plead a weak spine. She ought to have been standing, or at least sitting bolt upright. She had no business to lounge away the noon on a sofa. She ought likewise to have worn decent garments – a gown covering her properly, which was not the case. Out of abundance of material, seven and twenty yards I should say, of drapery, she managed to make inefficient raiment. Then, for the wretched untidiness surrounding her, there could be no excuse. Pots and pans – or perhaps I ought to say, vases and goblets – were rolled here and there on the foreground, a perfect rubbish of flowers was mixed amongst them, and an absurd and disorderly mass of curtain upholstery smothered the couch and cumbered the floor. On referring to the catalog, I found that this this notable production bore name: 'Cleopatra.
Charlotte Brontë (Villette)
Great writers and my mom never used food as an object. Instead it was a medium, a catalyst to mend hearts, to break down barriers, to build relationships. Mom's cooking fed body and soul. She used to quip, "If the food is good, there's no need to talk about the weather." That was my mantra for years---food as meal and conversation, a total experience. I leaned my forehead against the glass and thought again about Emma and the arrowroot. Mom had highlighted it in my sophomore English class. "Jane Fairfax knew it was given with a selfish heart. Emma didn't care about Jane, she just wanted to appear benevolent." "That girl was stupid. She was poor and should've accepted the gift." The football team had hooted for their spokesman. "That girl's name was Jane Fairfax, and motivation always matters." Mom's glare seared them. I tried to remember the rest of the lesson, but couldn't. I think she assigned a paper, and the football team stopped chuckling. Another memory flashed before my eyes. It was from that same spring; Mom was baking a cake to take to a neighbor who'd had a knee replacement. "We don't have enough chocolate." I shut the cabinet door. "We're making an orange cake, not chocolate." "Chocolate is so much better." "Then we're lucky it's not for you. Mrs. Conner is sad and she hurts and it's spring. The orange cake will not only show we care, it'll bring sunshine and spring to her dinner tonight. She needs that." "It's just a cake." "It's never just a cake, Lizzy." I remembered the end of that lesson: I rolled my eyes----Mom loathed that----and received dish duty. But it turned out okay; the batter was excellent. I shoved the movie reel of scenes from my head. They didn't fit in my world. Food was the object. Arrowroot was arrowroot. Cake was cake. And if it was made with artisan dark chocolate and vanilla harvested by unicorns, all the better. People would crave it, order it, and pay for it. Food wasn't a metaphor---it was the commodity---and to couch it in other terms was fatuous. The one who prepared it best won.
Katherine Reay (Lizzy and Jane)
Mr. Bredon had been a week with Pym's Publicity, and had learnt a number of things. He learned the average number of words that can be crammed into four inches of copy; that Mr. Armstrong's fancy could be caught by an elaborately-drawn lay-out, whereas Mr. Hankin looked on art-work as waste of a copy-writer's time; that the word “pure” was dangerous, because, if lightly used, it laid the client open to prosecution by the Government inspectors, whereas the words “highest quality,” “finest ingredients,” “packed under the best conditions” had no legal meaning, and were therefore safe; that the expression “giving work to umpteen thousand British employees in our model works at so-and-so” was not by any means the same thing as “British made throughout”; that the north of England liked its butter and margarine salted, whereas the south preferred it fresh; that the Morning Star would not accept any advertisements containing the word “cure,” though there was no objection to such expressions as “relieve” or “ameliorate,” and that, further, any commodity that professed to “cure” anything might find itself compelled to register as a patent medicine and use an expensive stamp; that the most convincing copy was always written with the tongue in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity's worth producing—for some reason—poverty and flatness of style; that if, by the most far-fetched stretch of ingenuity, an indecent meaning could be read into a headline, that was the meaning that the great British Public would infallibly read into it; that the great aim and object of the studio artist was to crowd the copy out of the advertisement and that, conversely, the copy-writer was a designing villain whose ambition was to cram the space with verbiage and leave no room for the sketch; that the lay-out man, a meek ass between two burdens, spent a miserable life trying to reconcile these opposing parties; and further, that all departments alike united in hatred of the client, who persisted in spoiling good lay-outs by cluttering them up with coupons, free-gift offers, lists of local agents and realistic portraits of hideous and uninteresting cartons, to the detriment of his own interests and the annoyance of everybody concerned.
Dorothy L. Sayers
propose that we consider our farmers on a spectrum, let’s say, of agrarianism. On one end of the spectrum we have farmers like James, interested in producing the finest foodstuffs that they can, given the soil, the climate, the water, the budget, and their talent. They observe how efficacious or not their efforts are proving, and they adapt accordingly. Variety is one of the keys to this technique, eschewing the corporate monocultures for a revolving set of plants and animals, again, to mimic what was already happening on the land before we showed up with our earth-shaving machinery. It’s tough as hell, and in many cases impossible, to farm this way and earn enough profit to keep your bills paid and your family fed, but these farmers do exist. On the other end of the spectrum is full-speed-ahead robo-farming, in which the farmer is following the instructions of the corporation to produce not food but commodities in such a way that the corporation sits poised to make the maximum financial profit. Now, this is the part that has always fascinated me about us as a population: This kind of farmer is doing all they can to make their factory quota for the company, of grain, or meat, or what have you, despite their soil, climate, water, budget, or talent. It only stands to reason that this methodology is the very definition of unsustainable. Clearly, this is an oversimplification of an issue that requires as much of my refrain (nuance!) as any other human endeavor, but the broad strokes are hard to refute. The first farmer is doing their best to work with nature. The second farmer is doing their best despite nature. In order for the second farmer to prosper, they must defeat nature. A great example of this is the factory farming of beef/pork/chicken/eggs/turkey/salmon/etc. The manufacturers of these products have done everything they can to take the process out of nature entirely and hide it in a shed, where every step of the production has been engineered to make a profit; to excel at quantity. I know you’re a little bit ahead of me here, but I’ll go ahead and ask the obvious question: What of quality? If you’re willing to degrade these many lives with impunity—the lives of the animals themselves, the workers “growing” them, the neighbors having to suffer the voluminous poisons being pumped into the ecosystem/watershed, and the humans consuming your products—then what are you about? Can that even be considered farming? Again, I’m asking this of us. Of you and me, because what I have just described is the way a lot of our food is produced right now, in the system that we all support with our dollars. How did we get here, in both the US and the UK? How can we change our national stance toward agriculture to accommodate more middle-size farmers and less factory farms? How would Aldo Leopold feel about it?
Nick Offerman (Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside)
They're really going to mash the world up this time, the damn fools. When I read that description of the victims of Nagasaki I was sick: "And we saw what first looked like lizards crawling up the hill, croaking. It got lighter and we could see that it was humans, their skin burned off, and their bodies broken where they had been thrown against something." Sounds like something out of a horror story. God save us from doing that again. For the United States did that. Our guilt. My country. No, never again. And then one reads in the papers "Second bomb blast in Nevada bigger than the first! " What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled "enemy?" Weren't the Russians communists when they helped us slap down the Germans? And now. What could we do with the Russian nation if we bombed it to bits? How could we "rule" such a mass of foreign people - - - we, who don't even speak the Russian language? How could we control them under our "democratic" system, we, who even now are losing that precious commodity, freedom of speech? (Mr. Crockett," that dear man, was questioned by the town board. A supposedly "enlightened" community. All he is is a pacifist. That, it seems, is a crime.) Why do we send the pride of our young men overseas to be massacred for three dirty miles of nothing but earth? Korea was never divided into "North" and "South." They are one people; and our democracy is of no use to those who have not been educated to it. Freedom is not of use to those who do not know how to employ it. When I think of that little girl on the farm talking about her brother - "And he said all they can think of over there is killing those God-damn Koreans." What does she know of war? Of lizard-like humans crawling up a hillside? All she knows is movies and school room gossip. Oh, America's young, strong. So is Russia. And how they can think of atom-bombing each other, I don't know. What will be left? War will come some day now, with all the hothead leaders and articles "What If Women are Drafted?" Hell, I'd sooner be a citizen of Africa than see America mashed and bloody and making a fool of herself. This country has a lot, but we're not always right and pure. And what of the veterans of the first and second world wars? The maimed, the crippled. What good their lives? Nothing. They rot in the hospitals, and we forget them. I could love a Russian boy - and live with him. It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual - but to kill off all the ones who could forge a strong nation? How foolish! Of what good - living and freedom without home, without family, without all that makes life?
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
In the humble environs of my boyhood, books were a scarce commodity. By local standards, however, the personal library of STR Manickam, a former ‘revolutionary’ or militant nationalist, was sizeable. He encouraged me to read all I could and I often visited his home to borrow books.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (The Righteous Life: The Very Best of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam)
The meat section is mostly devoted to presliced meats for hot pots and quick-cooked dishes, with a thin steak or chop here and there. In addition to commodity meat, you'll find Wagyu beef and kurobuta pork. The quality of the meat in an average Tokyo supermarket is higher than at most specialty butchers in the U.S. Time to fess up. Life Supermarket is not the best supermarket in the world; every supermarket in Tokyo is the best supermarket in the world. I haven't even gotten to the prepared food (two different yakitori sections, reheatable fried foods that stay crunchy, and lots of appealing salads and cooked vegetables).
Matthew Amster-Burton (Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo)
Revolt exists beyond use-value, and it is manifested beyond useful revolt. It expresses what is human but not as a social value, more as the injured response. We may deduce that there is, amongst the production and exchange of commodities, a human real because of the unreconstructed register of pain that individuals pre- serve as the core of their existence. The essence of hu- man experience is the recording of anguish. Revolt is the expression of response to negative experiences of the world. And identity is formulated from the record of past traumas—that is, the mingling of essence with historical conditions. For reasons of revolt’s perceptual/emotional character, it only very rarely coincides precisely with political formulations, which more often appropriate it in the name of giving it a voice. Most Revolutionary Theory thus misrepresents discontent and grievance and attempts to contain it within an ideological framework... but with, at best, only temporary success—revolt also re- volts against revolution. Human essence overruns, and so thwarts, all understanding of it.
frére dupont (species being and other stories)
In a seminal 1981 paper, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked out the mathematics behind these “winner-take-all” markets. One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
and many tough life choices, Gwen must decide who or what she will become. Fleet Cadet or Civilian? Friend or lover? Average or extraordinary? Can she make new friends? Can she trust the old ones, such as Logan Sangre, her sexy high school crush and an Earth special operative? Time and time again, Gwen’s uncanny ability to come up with the best answer in a crisis saves her life and others. And now, her unique Logos voice makes her an extremely valuable commodity to the Atlanteans—so much so that her enigmatic commanding officer Aeson Kassiopei, who is also the Imperial Prince of Atlantis, has taken an increasingly personal interest in her. Before the end of the journey, Gwen must convince him that she has what it takes to compete in the deadly Games of the Atlantis Grail. It’s becoming apparent—the life of her family and all of Earth depends on it. COMPETE is the second book in The Atlantis Grail series. Don’t miss another book by Vera Nazarian! Subscribe to the mailing list to be notified when the next books by Vera Nazarian are available. We promise not to spam you or chit-chat, only make occasional book release announcements.
Vera Nazarian (Compete (The Atlantis Grail, #2))
Fanny had little or no self-esteem on her best days, and courage was another commodity she had precious little experience with. She dropped to her knees and prayed with all her heart for both. It was clear to her that divine intervention was the only way she would be able to rejoin that insufferable Argus Winslow and the dreadful waitress.
Tom Bodett (The End of the Road)
Traditionally the best lot in life for a male was to hitch his star to a powerful female and hope to be looked after, or else – for those born with valuable Understandings – to end up a pampered commodity in a seraglio, ready to be traded away or mated off as part of the constantly shifting power games between peer houses.
Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time (Children of Time, #1))
I have learned that when you've done your homework, once you recognize that supply and demand are totally out of whack, and you make your move, you are definitely going to get very lucky.
Jim Rogers (Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World's Best Market)
According to the media and other stock market "experts," the equities bull is forever hiding just around that next corner on Wall Street. But millions of investors who listened to the experts back in 1998-2001 about "the New Economy" get hammered in the stock market and are still trying to get back to even. The smart investor looks for opportunities to acquire value on the cheap, with one eye out for a dynamic change in the offing that might make that investment even more valuable.
Jim Rogers (Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World's Best Market)
Today, Chicago, like London, sucks in the best talent from its interior in the Midwest, where the swing to Trump was strongest. In the past, Chicago acted as a regional locomotive, buying the Midwest’s farm produce and other raw commodities and then converting them into products. The city was linked to its surrounding geography and vice versa. Now it mostly hovers above its hinterlands. In some ways it is also parasitic on them.44 Much like the giant sucking sound of London hoovering up the UK’s talent, Chicago now takes the best and the brightest from the small towns of America and plugs them into the global economy. Chicago’s success is no longer symbiotic with its rural neighbours. It comes at their expense
Edward Luce (The Retreat of Western Liberalism)
Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
Medicine is becoming a business, and if people choose medicine as a way to make money, they should go to the States because there, health care is a commodity for sale and you can shop around for the best product. Patients are the customers and if you're rich you get better health care than if you're poor. In Canada, health care is a basic human right, a service that every human being deserves. Tell me, have any of you ever seen someone get preferential treatment? A Canadian over a non-resident? A white person over one of color? A VIP over an ordinary citizen?
Tilda Shalof (A Nurse's Story: Life, Death and In-Between in an Intensive Care Unit)
Maybe that's what time is for: to give meaning to the things we do; to create a context in which we can linger in something until, finally, we have given it something invaluable, something that we can never get back: time. And once we've invested the most precious commodity that we will ever have, it suddenly has meaning and importance. So maybe time is just how we measure meaning. Maybe time is how we best measure love.
Jason Mott (Hell of a Book)
The great American innovation in congregation is to turn it into a consumer enterprise. We Americans have developed a culture of acquisition, an economy that is dependent on wanting more, requiring more. We have a huge advertising industry designed to stir up appetites we didn't even know we had. We are insatiable. It didn't take long for some of our Christian brothers and sisters to develop consumer congregations. If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and most effective way to get them into our congregations is to identify what they want and offer it to them, satisfy their fantasies, promise them the moon, recast the gospel in consumer terms: entertainment, satisfaction, excitement, adventure, problem-solving, whatever. This is the language we Americans grow up on, the language we understand. We are the world's champion consumers, so why shouldn't we have state-of-the-art consumer churches? Given the conditions prevailing in our culture, this is the best and most effective way that has ever been devised for gathering large and prosperous congregations. Americans lead the world in showing how to do it. There is only one thing wrong: this is not the way in which God brings us into conformity with the life of Jesus and sets us on the way of Jesus' salvation. This is not the way in which we become less and Jesus becomes more. This is not the way in which our sacrificed lives become available to others in justice and service. The cultivation of consumer spirituality is the antithesis of a sacrificial, "deny yourself" congregation. A consumer church is an antichrist church. We can't gather a God-fearing, God-worshiping congregation by cultivating a consumer-pleasing, commodity-oriented congregation. When we do, the wheels start falling off the wagon. And they are falling off the wagon. We can't suppress the Jesus way in order to sell the Jesus truth. The Jesus way and the Jesus truth must be congruent. Only when the Jesus way is organically joined with the Jesus truth do we get the Jesus life.
Eugene H. Peterson (The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way)
MCX Gold Silver Tips - Free Gold trading tips today with target and stop-loss, Online MCX Gold tips provider, Live Gold tips Hindi. Finding out Commodity Trading won’t assist you to earn a profit- you would like to know what market of commodities works best for you, your risk, your goals, then take the support of our experts who are studying the market for years. MCX Bazaar Adviser can guide you with all that and far more. If you’re able to step into the world of growth, MCX Commodity Tips then it’s time you get in touch with us at 9814289955.
MCX Bazaar
During the toddler years, a lot of action takes place at the toilet. No, not potty training; throwing things in. From a toddler’s viewpoint, the commode is one of the best toys around.
Shannon Payette Seip (The World According to Toddlers)
One of the most expensive commodities a nation can have is a cheap labor force. From this a host of consequences leaped forth as inevitable. —If you get labor for almost nothing, you have no incentive to buy expensive tools and the quality of your product will lag behind that of nations who do use the best tools on the market. —If you keep your labor occupied on menial tasks that are best suited to machines, your work force never develops those skills that would earn you more income. —If you employ ten to do the work of one, none of the ten will work to maximum efficiency because each will realize that what he or she does isn’t significant. —If you don’t pay your labor good wages, how can they ever afford to buy what you make? You limit your potential market by 50 percent at least, and if every employer in the region pays the same low wages, your market can vanish altogether. —A nation’s wealth is generated when the money from wages is quickly spread around because this causes more goods to be produced, and real wealth consists in the making and interchange of goods. And then I made the discovery: ‘Ricardo was wrong. There is no fixed quantum of money in the world, or in any nation. The rich man doesn’t suffer deprivation when labor gets a bigger share, for that larger amount means a bigger total for him.’” —Chapter VII, “Ideas”, page 257-258
James A. Michener (The World Is My Home: A Memoir)
This threat of unsustainability is the constant, and most compelling, cry of those who would establish a private health care system in parallel to Medicare. Driven by the belief that health care is a commodity that can be best delivered through profit, they argue that the current system would be helped and not threatened by this change. The evidence is clear: this is rubbish. Wherever it has been tried (in other countries and in limited ways here in Canada), a parallel system has increased waiting lists and practitioner shortages in the public system. It also erodes commitment to funding the public system by those who can afford to sidestep the queues, ultimately leading to two systems that are very different in quality and cost.
Ryan Meili (A Healthy Society: How a Focus on Health Can Revive Canadian Democracy)
Many tradesmen export their best commodities-the Christian should not. He should have all his conversation everywhere of the best savour; but let him have a care to put forth the sweetest fruit of spiritual life and testimony in his own family.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version)
Trade India Research is best Free MCX Market Tips provider. We provide MCX normal Calls, Free MCX Market Tips, commodity tips, MCX Research Calls, commodity trading tips with best service.
TradeIndia Research
Did we mention the giant toilet bowl? Wet ’n Wild has an attraction dubbed The Storm. The ride actually looks like a lot of fun, but in all honesty it strongly resembles a huge commode. Riders wash down a chute to gain speed, then circle around a huge bowl before dropping into a pool below. This must be how that goldfish you flushed in third grade felt.
Bob Sehlinger (Beyond Disney: The Unofficial Guide to Universal Orlando, SeaWorld & the Best of Central Florida)
There was a time when I had no money, I was old enough, so I couldn’t ask my mummy, I had to do something to fill my tummy. I was confused and began to wonder Should I start a business or become a plumber? Then I saw a few children cross the road, Running a school is better than cleaning commodes. Now I am an admin of a kid’s school, And I am looking for an administration tool. I got a few software solutions such as Fedena and Archivist, I heard they’re the best according to many educationists. Then I finally chose Archivist Online, It’s economical and comes with benefits of longtime. Now I entertain over 200 students, And my administration network is enjoying the new improvements. I am proud to be the principal of a successful school, Running a school isn’t that bad after all.
Joina
Summary Gaining insight from massive and growing datasets, such as those generated by large organizations, requires specialized technologies for each step in the data analysis process. Once organizational data is cleaned, merged, and shaped into the form desired, the process of asking questions about data is often an iterative one. MapReduce frameworks, such as the open-source Apache Hadoop project, are flexible platforms for the economical processing of large amounts of data using a collection of commodity machines. Although it is often the best choice for large batch-processing operations, MapReduce is not always the ideal solution for quickly running iterative queries over large datasets. MapReduce can require a great deal of disk I/O, a great deal of administration, and multiple steps to return the result of a single query. Waiting for results to complete makes iterative, ad hoc analysis difficult. Analytical databases
Anonymous
Kidnappings happened, my parents were told, but they also ended. This was meant as reassurance. So was another point the agents made, offering a first bit of hard comfort in what would turn into months of it: Nigel and I were now commodities. The kidnappers had spent money to catch us and keep us. They'd made an investment, which meant that it was in their best interest to keep us alive. If they killed us, it would be their loss, too.
Amanda Lindhout (A House in the Sky)
Economic growth Stalin style was simple: develop industry by government command and obtain the necessary resources for this by taxing agriculture at very high rates. The communist state did not have an effective tax system, so instead Stalin “collectivized” agriculture. This process entailed the abolition of private property rights to land and the herding of all people in the countryside into giant collective farms run by the Communist Party. This made it much easier for Stalin to grab agricultural output and use it to feed all the people who were building and manning the new factories. The consequences of this for the rural folk were calamitous. The collective farms completely lacked incentives for people to work hard, so production fell sharply. So much of what was produced was extracted that there was not enough to eat. People began to starve to death. In the end, probably six million people died of famine, while hundreds of thousands of others were murdered or banished to Siberia during the forcible collectivization. Neither the newly created industry nor the collectivized farms were economically efficient in the sense that they made the best use of what resources the Soviet Union possessed. It sounds like a recipe for economic disaster and stagnation, if not outright collapse. But the Soviet Union grew rapidly. The reason for this is not difficult to understand. Allowing people to make their own decisions via markets is the best way for a society to efficiently use its resources. When the state or a narrow elite controls all these resources instead, neither the right incentives will be created nor will there be an efficient allocation of the skills and talents of people. But in some instances the productivity of labor and capital may be so much higher in one sector or activity, such as heavy industry in the Soviet Union, that even a top-down process under extractive institutions that allocates resources toward that sector can generate growth. As we saw in chapter 3, extractive institutions in Caribbean islands such as Barbados, Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica could generate relatively high levels of incomes because they allocated resources to the production of sugar, a commodity coveted worldwide. The production of sugar based on gangs of slaves was certainly not “efficient,” and there was no technological change or creative destruction in these societies, but this did not prevent them from achieving some amount of growth under extractive institutions.
Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
No amount of marketing will change an experience.” —Brian Solis Customer experience is everything that happens when people encounter your brand. And whether it’s online or offline, you get to design it. Most people don’t put money on the table and hope that they hate the results of their choice. They actually want to fall in love with you and your brand. It’s your job to give them a reason to. The feeling your customer leaves with, as she walks out the door or clicks away from your website, is your best opportunity to differentiate your brand. Commodities are just stuff with a fixed value—until they’re not. The brands you love and talk about are not the ones that competed on price or features. They are the ones that changed how it felt to buy a cup of coffee, slip on a pair of shoes, or open a laptop in a café.
Bernadette Jiwa (The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 Keys to a Great Brand Story and Why Your Business Needs One)
It is above all in their writings that one can best study the true nature” of the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in L’ancien régime et la Révolution, of the Économistes or Physiocrats of the mid-eighteenth century, of Quesnay and Letrosne and Morelly and Mercier de la Rivière. The “Economists have had less brilliance in history than the philosophers,” he wrote; they nonetheless express, even more than the philosophers, the “single notion” in which “the political philosophy of the eighteenth century consists.” This is the idea that it is appropriate “to substitute simple and elementary rules, derived from reason and from natural law, for the complicated and traditional customs” of particular societies at particular times. The past, for the Économistes, was “the object of a limitless scorn.” They argued for the abstract and the general; for administrative simplicity, for “public utility” without “private rights,” for “laisser faire” or “the free exchange of commodities” without “political freedoms.
Emma Rothschild (Economic Sentiments)
the title of our book lightly, either. Let Go To Grow is all about our vision of the future of business, its implications, and our best practices. It's about the future of your business too. We begin the book with some sobering marketplace realities and offer a set of management principles
Linda S. Sanford (Let Go To Grow: Escaping The Commodity Trap)
Challenging the earlier economists of his day, Marx was keen to show how the products of capitalism did not just magically appear, nor did they have inherent value. Instead, Marx wanted to show that the value derived from commodities was part of a specific kind of social relationship—one in which the labor power of workers added value to commodities. In this way, the notions of commodities and labor lie at the center of understanding how Marx viewed capitalist relationships as inherently exploitative, as the dominance of one class (the bourgeoisie, or the owners of the means of production) over another class (the proletariat, the working class, or those who have nothing to sell but their labor). Proletarians were lending labor power to the production process, transforming goods into saleable commodities, and receiving only part of the value generated in this process. To Marx, this was wholesale thievery; the expenditure of human effort to produce commodities was the actual expenditure of human life, of the limited time that any of us have on this planet, and it came at the expense of us realizing our actual nature as productive, creative beings that generated meaning through our labor. Marx believed deeply in the notion that humans were creative and that we could be positively world-transformative.Through our labor, we not only make the world, but we also express the best part of ourselves as a species. The hijacking of all of this for the productive ends of the bourgeoisie—for mere profit—was, to Marx, a horrible crime being perpetuated on the weaker by the stronger.
Bob Torres (Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights)
The most valuable commodity in business today, if people would only recognize it, is enthusiasm
Rona Jaffe (The Best of Everything)
Piers Morgan Piers Morgan is a British journalist best known for his editorial work for the Daily Mirror from 1995 through 2004. He is also a successful author and television personality whose recent credits include a recurring role as a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent. A controversial member of the tabloid press during Diana’s lifetime, Piers Morgan established a uniquely close relationship with the Princess during the 1990s. “What’s been the most upsetting thing you’ve had to read about yourself?” “Well, those pictures the other day of my supposed cellulite upset me a lot actually. It really hurt me. It was too painful, too personal. It’s my body everyone was talking about, not just my face. I felt invaded because they put the cameras deliberately onto my legs.” Diana’s relationship with the paparazzi was obviously complex. She professed to hate them: “I know most of the paparazzi and their number plates. They think I am stupid but I know where they are. I’ve had ten years practice. I would support an antistalking bill tomorrow.” Then she took me to the window and started showing me the various media cars, vans, and motorbikes lurking outside. But when I asked why she doesn’t go out of one of the ten other more discreet exits, she exposed her contrary side: “I want to go out the front like anyone else. Why should I change my life for them?” “Because it would make your life easier?” I said. William was equally upset by the constant prying lenses: “Why do they have to chase my mother around so much? It’s unfair on her.” I was torn between genuine concern for the young man protecting his mum so gallantly, and a sense of foreboding for him that one day it would be him, not his mother, who would be chased just as aggressively. How do you explain to a thirteen-year-old boy that he sells papers and therefor he’s a valuable commodity to photographers and editors like me?
Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
Take Brooksley Born, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), who waged an unsuccessful campaign to regulate the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market. Soon after the Clinton administration asked her to take the reins of the CFTC, a regulatory backwater, she became aware of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market, a rapidly expanding and opaque market, which she attempted to regulate. According to a PBS Frontline special: "Her attempts to regulate derivatives ran into fierce resistance from then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who prevailed upon Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation." Put more directly by New York Times reporter Timothy O'Brien, "they ... shut her up and shut her down." Mind you, Born was no dummy. She was the first female president of the Stanford Law Review, the first woman to finish at the top of the class, and an expert in commodities and futures. But because a trio of people who were literally en-titled decided they knew what was best for the market, they dismissed her call for regulation, a dismissal that triggered the financial collapse of 2008. To be fair to Greenspan et al., their resistance was not surprising. According to psychologists Hillel Einhorn and Robin Hogarth, "we [as human beings] are prone to search only for confirming evidence, and ignore disconfirming evidence." In the case of Born, it was the '90s, the markets were doing well, and the country was prospering; it's easy to see why the powerful troika rejected her disconfirming views. Throw in the fact that the disconcerting evidence was coming from a "disconfirming" person (i.e., a woman), and they were even more likely to disregard the data. In the aftermath, Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the SEC, said, "If she just would have gotten to know us... maybe it would have gone a different way."12 Born quotes Michael Greenberg, the director of the CFTC under her, as saying, "They say you weren't a team player, but I never saw them issue you a uniform." We like ideas and people that fit into our world-view, but there is tremendous value in finding room for those that don't. According to Paul Carlile and Clayton Christensen, "It is only when an anomaly is identified—an outcome for which a theory can't account that an opportunity to improve theory occurs."13 One of the ways you'll know you are coming up against an anomaly is if you find yourself annoyed, defensive, even dismissive, of a person, or his idea.
Whitney Johnson (Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work)
bulk n. 1 [mass noun] the mass or size of something large: residents jump up and down on their rubbish to reduce its bulk. large size or shape: he moved quickly in spite of his bulk. [count noun] a large mass or shape. [as modifier] large in quantity: bulk orders of over 100 copies. roughage in food: potatoes supply energy, essential protein, and bulk. cargo in an unpackaged mass such as grain or oil. [PRINTING] the thickness of paper or a book. 2 (the bulk of) the greater part of something: the bulk of the traffic had passed. v. [with obj.] 1 treat (a product) so that its quantity appears greater than it is: traders were bulking up their flour with chalk. [no obj.] (bulk up) build up flesh and muscle, typically in training for sporting events. 2 combine (shares or commodities for sale): your shares will be bulked with others and sold at the best prices available. bulk large be or seem to be of great importance: territorial questions bulked large in diplomatic relations. in bulk 1 (of goods) in large quantities and generally at a reduced price: retail multiples buy in bulk. 2 (of a cargo or commodity) not packaged; loose. Middle English: the senses ‘cargo as a whole’ and ‘heap, large quantity’ (the earliest recorded) are probably from Old Norse búlki ‘cargo’; other senses arose perhaps by alteration of obsolete bouk ‘belly, body’. bulk buying
Angus Stevenson (Oxford Dictionary of English)
To conceive of an education as a commodity (as if it were a polo pony or an Armani suit) is to construe the idea of democracy as the freedom of a market instead of a freedom of the mind. I can understand why the mistake is both easy and convenient to make, but unless we stop telling ourselves that America is best understood as the sum of its gross domestic product, we stand little chance of re-imagining our history or reengineering our schools.
Lewis H. Lapham (Lapham's Quarterly: Ways of Learning)
let’s turn to the formula, talking about accumulation: M C C’ M’. M, money, C, input commodities, one cycle; M prime, more money. What happens in this process to allow M to become M prime, which is the whole point? You wouldn’t go through all of this if you ended up at the end with the same money as you started out with at the beginning. M just came out as M. The whole point is to get from M to M prime. To understand this, we have to examine this peculiar commodity of labor power. As an analysis of how more money emerges from the production process than goes in, Marx first rules out any possibilities of cheating or unfairness. In his analysis of the capitalist system, Marx is in a conversation with, and often in argumentation with, the economists, and political economists who came before them, principally the classical political economists. People like David Ricardo, Adam Smith, and a number of others. He wanted to make his analysis within their frame of rules, which presents capital in its best light. So that if in fact he shows it not to produce the advantages that they claim, he will have done it on their terms. One of the things he does is to rule out things like cheating, like buying low and selling high, which is a sort of principal character of mercantilism. The reason he rules this out is, he says, that on balance in society, this doesn’t produce any additional surplus value or wealth. It simply redistributes what value or wealth already exists. That it all averages out; if you cheat somebody, you may have gotten something, but they lost something. It’s a kind of zero-sum thing. He rules that out. Everything in the process as Marx analyzes it trades at its true value. The means of production cannot be the source of the additional value. Remember, he’s trying to figure out in his process how we get from M to M prime. One of the things that capitalists do is buy means of production. He says, those cannot be the source of additional value. The reasons are this. They either transfer part of their value to the new products, or, for example, you depreciate machinery over time. You can calculate how much of the value goes into a production in each cycle of production. Or the means of production actually end up incorporated into the new product itself, but there is no new value there. So, if you make something, if you make bread out of wheat, it becomes incorporated in the bread, but there is no new value there. It’s necessary for the capitalists to find on the market the commodity that produces more value than it itself costs. That’s the trick. This unique commodity is labor power, and is the only element in the process that produces surplus value, which is the source of profit.
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
Self-love is an act of holy disruption. To love yourself in a world that profits directly from your self-loathing is the ultimate subversion of all that seeks to keep you tame. We've been taught to hate all that we are (our softness, our fierceness, our not-enoughness, our too-muchness, our tender flesh, our hard bones, our voices, our insatiable hunger, our yearning for more, our aging, our youth, our ugly, our beauty, our all) so that we can be packaged into a commodity that sells us back to ourselves. Our self-hatred is, in many ways, one of the pillars that capitalism and the patriarchy rely on to keep us small and contained, caged and corralled, safe and quietly in place. To fall headfirst into a lifelong love affair with our purpose, our passion, our capacity, for pleasure, with the sound of our yes and the tenor of our no. With the reflection in the mirror. With the rich inner landscape of our fumbling and messy aliveness - this threatens the status quo. As Naomi Wolf said, "Our appetites DO need to be controlled if things are to stay in place." I don't know about you, but I'm at all not interested or invested in keeping things in place, in maintaining the status quo, in propping up a paradigm that's been trembling on its last legs for far too long. I don't want to have to tamp down my desire, to contain the embers of my fire, to minimize the heat of my burn. I want to love myself enough to always ask for more, and then I want to love myself harder so that I can expand wide enough to receive it when it comes. And no, I don’t think this is easy. Or simple. Or even always gentle. But you loving you? Like really, really loving you? It subverts the whole damn thing. It disrupts the narrative. It flips the script. It’s a way to reclaim all that has been taken. To demand your seat at the table. To call your wholeness home.
Jeanette LeBlanc
One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
Are you ready to make more money? MCX Bazaar will help you to do effortless commodity trading. It is easy to make decisions with our expert team. Our dedicated team will help you to achieve success in commodity trading. We provide you with trading options across a variety of commodities like Crude Oil Tips Free Trial, Gold, silver, base metals, etc.
MCX Bazaar
Anything worthwhile takes time. Maybe that’s what time is for: to give meaning to the things we do; to create a context in which we can linger in something until, finally, we have given it something invaluable, something that we can never get back: time. And once we’ve invested the most precious commodity that we will ever have, it suddenly has meaning and importance. So maybe time is just how we measure meaning. Maybe time is how we best measure love. Finally,
Jason Mott (Hell of a Book)
Production for use’ means here the kind of work which, in the small group, is guided by anticipating for whose use the product is intended. But this sentiment fails to take into account the sorts of considerations advanced in the foregoing chapters, and to be argued again in the following: only the differences between expected prices for different commodities and services and their costs, in the self-generating order of the market, tell the individual how best to contribute to the pool from which we all draw in proportion to our contribution.
Friedrich A. Hayek (The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1))
You’re a kind young woman, Brea. In another time and place we might have been the best of friends. You care about the people around you. It doesn’t take a mind reader to see that.” She glanced at Brea’s reflection in the mirror above her dresser. “In this world, that’s a rare commodity. It would be a shame to see you lose it.
M. Lynn (In the Name of the Queen: Starter Set)
It did not change one iota of my situation. No one could possibly look at me and know that I wanted, for once, to try. In all honesty, I didn't know if I had what it would take to weather the storms- or the elements- rolling my way. But I did have hope. That commodity came from beyond myself, from Someone. Someone who knew how weak and cowardly I really was... even with the best of intentions.
Heather L.L. FitzGerald (The Flaming Sword (The Tethered World Chronicles, #2))
No, said a little voice in the back of her head, you can’t. She knew that voice quite well. She didn’t like it much, mostly because it told her the truth, a commodity whose supply had a tendency to exceed demand. For a genuine free spirit, the very best the truth can ever be is a starting point, a fixer-upper in need of a great deal of tender loving imagination. At its worst – like now, for example – it’s a brick wall across the highway, with barbed wire, searchlights and dogs. No, you can’t.
Tom Holt (The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse)
Maybe that’s what time is for: to give meaning to the things we do; to create a context in which we can linger in something until, finally, we have given it something invaluable, something that we can never get back: time. And once we’ve invested the most precious commodity that we will ever have, it suddenly has meaning and importance. So maybe time is just how we measure meaning. Maybe time is how we best measure love.
Jason Mott (Hell of a Book)
I was now a graduate of the best cooking school in the country – a valuable commodity on the open market – I had field experience, a vocabulary and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others.
Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)
Among the variety of commodities which attract the attention of mankind, there is one thing of more value than all others. A principle which, if once possessed, will greatly assist in obtaining all other things worth possessing, whether it were power, wealth, riches, honors, thrones, or dominions. Comparatively few have ever possessed it, although it was within the reach of many others, but they were either not aware of it, or did not know its value. It has worked wonders for the few who have possessed it. Some it enabled to escape from drowning, while every soul who did not possess it was lost in the mighty deep. Others it saved from famine, while thousands perished all around them; by it men have often been raised to dignity in the state; yea, more, some have been raised to the throne of empires. The possession of it has sometimes raised men from a dungeon to a palace; and there are instances in which those that possessed it were delivered from the flames, while cities were consumed, and every soul, themselves excepted, perished. Frequently, when a famine or the sword has destroyed a city or nation, they alone who possessed it escaped unhurt. By this time the reader inquires, What can this be? Inform me, and I will purchase it, even at the sacrifice of all I possess on earth. Well, kind reader, this treasure is FOREKNOWLEDGE! a knowledge of things future! Let a book be published, entitled, "A Knowledge of the Future," and let mankind be really convinced that it did give a certain, definite knowledge of future events, so that its pages unfold the future history of the nations, and of many great events, as the history of Greece or Rome does unfold the past, and a large edition would immediately sell at a great sum per copy; indeed, they would be above all price. Now, kind reader, the books of the Prophets, and the Spirit of Prophecy were intended for this very purpose. Well did the Apostle say, "Covet earnestly the best gifts; but rather that ye prophesy.
Parley P. Pratt (A Voice of Warning An introduction to the faith and doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
The important point to understand about commodities is that they have extreme cycles. That’s why the best traders make their money in this sector. And sudden weather patterns or mining strikes can cause tremendous short-term fluctuations, often exploding like a bomb! Unless you’re working with someone who has a proven system, don’t trade commodities. You can invest in them, but tread cautiously. Remember that commodities are all different in their ability to ramp up supply (elasticity) when demand accelerates. It’s easier to cultivate more land for crops or livestock in an era of urbanization, but it’s not so easy to drill deeper for more oil or unearth more industrial metals like iron ore, coal, lead, nickel, and copper. Pulling uranium and the rare metals out of the ground is even harder.
Harry S. Dent (Zero Hour: Turn the Greatest Political and Financial Upheaval in Modern History to Your Advantage)
Transactions between companies are usually governed by the free market. When we buy a commodity product from a vendor, we are trying to get it at the best possible price, and vice versa. But what happens when the value of something is not easily defined? What happens, for instance, when it takes a group of people to accomplish a certain task?
Andrew S. Grove (High Output Management)
In times when “truth” seems like a commodity peddled on every street corner, we need to grasp the power of the foundation we have in Scripture. While many readers will say “yes” and “amen” to this, the sad truth is that Bible reading is low even among those who frequently attend church. A 2015 study by LifeWay Research found that only 45 percent of people who attend church regularly read the Bible more than once a week. More than 40 percent of church attenders read their Bibles occasionally, about once or twice a month. Almost one in five churchgoers say they never read the Bible, which is about the same number as those who read it every day.[18]
Ed Stetzer (Christians in the Age of Outrage: How to Bring Our Best When the World Is at Its Worst)
VHl had its best ratings ever for the first season of Flavor of Love—ratings driven by large white audiences. MTV has expanded its offerings of black-themed reality shows in the hopes of attracting the same crowd. The profits to be made from racial stigma are considerable, and the fact that blacks—as well as whites—treat racial oppression as a commodity for consumption is not surprising. It is a familiar form of black complicity with racialized systems of control.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
No. I wouldn’t see what Mary saw until I’d been witness to the untimely decline of a generation of colleagues exhausted by the demands of jobs that never paid them enough, drowning in debt to care for children riddled with disorders that couldn’t be cured; and the cousins—and the best friend from high school—who ended up in shelters or on the street, tossed out of houses they could no longer afford; and until the near-dozen suicides and overdoses of fortysomething childhood classmates in a mere space of three years; and the friends and family medicated for despair, anxiety, lack of affect, insomnia, sexual dysfunction; and the premature cancers brought on by the chemical shortcuts for everything from the food moving through our irritable bowels to the lotions applied to our sun-poisoned skins. I wouldn’t see it until our private lives had consumed the public space, then been codified, foreclosed, and put up for auction; until the devices that enslave our minds had filled us with the toxic flotsam of a culture no longer worthy of the name; until the bright pliancy of human sentience—attention itself—had become the world’s most prized commodity, the very movements of our minds transformed into streams of unceasing revenue for someone, somewhere. I wouldn’t see it clearly until the American Self had fully mastered the plunder, idealized and legislated the splitting of the spoils, and brought to near completion the wholesale pillage not only of the so-called colony—how provincial a locution that seems now!—but also of the very world itself. In short, I wouldn’t see what she saw back then until I’d failed at trying to see it otherwise, until I’d ceased believing in the lie of my own redemption, until the suffering of others aroused in me a starker, clearer cry than any anthem to my own longing.
Ayad Akhtar (Homeland Elegies)
Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best. Even if the talent advantage of the best is small compared to the next rung down on the skill ladder, the superstars still win the bulk of the market.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
The most meaningful contingency with Superstars is the transaction. To keep from being sucked dry by these vampires, you must always think of yourself as a commodity, because they do. To survive with Superstars, you have to know what they want from you and what you want in return. Then you have to negotiate to get the best price you can. Superstars have absolutely no sense of fairness. If they want something, however, they will generally pay the price, provided it is demanded up front. Don’t extend credit. To negotiate a good price, you have to know what Superstars value. At the top of the list is whatever will make them look good. This can be anything from an impressive bottom line and employees who can do a bang-up job without much supervision, to trophy wives and fancy cars. Narcissistic supplies come in all shapes and sizes. Next on these vampires’ wish list is adoration. With Superstars you just can’t suck up too much. If you’re selling an idea to Superstars, do it quickly. Always cut to the chase, and tell them what’s in it for them if they give you what you want. Forget about snow jobs; these vampires are not easily fooled. Always do your homework. You can bet Superstars have done theirs.
Albert J. Bernstein (Emotional Vampires: Dealing With People Who Drain You Dry)
Sometimes there are hidden obstacles to scaling—a lesson that eBay has learned in recent years. Like all marketplaces, the auction marketplace lent itself to natural monopoly because buyers go where the sellers are and vice versa. But eBay found that the auction model works best for individually distinctive products like coins and stamps. It works less well for commodity products: people don’t want to bid on pencils or Kleenex, so it’s more convenient just to buy them from Amazon. eBay is still a valuable monopoly; it’s just smaller than people in 2004 expected it to be.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
Whenever I see everyone rushing to bet their money on what’s hot, I remind myself of Bernard Baruch, the Wall Street legend and adviser to U.S. presidents. During the stock-market craze of the late 1920s, Baruch stopped for a shoeshine one day and the guy working on his shoes began giving him stock tips. His shoes looking fine, Baruch headed back to the office—and sold everything. I had my own Bernard Baruch moment in mid-1998 as most people were transfixed by the astonishing and continued rise of a group of glamour tech stocks.
Jim Rogers (Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World's Best Market)
Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best. Even if the talent advantage of the best is small compared to the next rung down on the skill ladder, the
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
In a seminal 1981 paper, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked out the mathematics behind these “winner-take-all” markets. One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
Making mistakes is part of the learning process when it comes to trading or investing. Every trader makes mistakes in trading that ruin his entire capital. We have listed some common but 5 deadly trading mistakes that a novice or unprofessional trader does in the commodity market: No Patience, Over Trading, Trading Without Plan, Giving Into Emotions, Not Having A Trading Journal. You may include market conditions, the size of the trade, expiration time, prices, whether or not you were successful, and even notes on your emotions. Looking Forward and Join Free MCX Crude Oil Tips, MCX Commodity Trading Trial! Call at 9814289955 or go through our website.
MCX Bazaar
I once had a foreign exchange trader who worked for me who was an unabashed chartist. He truly believed that all the information you needed was reflected in the past history of a currency. Now it's true there can be less to consider in trading currencies than individual equities, since at least for developed country currencies it's typically not necessary to pore over their financial statements every quarter. And in my experience, currencies do exhibit sustainable trends more reliably than, say, bonds or commodities. Imbalances caused by, for example, interest rate differentials that favor one currency over another (by making it more profitable to invest in the higher-yielding one) can persist for years. Of course, another appeal of charting can be that it provides a convenient excuse to avoid having to analyze financial statements or other fundamental data. Technical analysts take their work seriously and apply themselves to it diligently, but it's also possible for a part-time technician to do his market analysis in ten minutes over coffee and a bagel. This can create the false illusion of being a very efficient worker. The FX trader I mentioned was quite happy to engage in an experiment whereby he did the trades recommended by our in-house market technician. Both shared the same commitment to charts as an under-appreciated path to market success, a belief clearly at odds with the in-house technician's avoidance of trading any actual positions so as to provide empirical proof of his insights with trading profits. When challenged, he invariably countered that managing trading positions would challenge his objectivity, as if holding a losing position would induce him to continue recommending it in spite of the chart's contrary insight. But then, why hold a losing position if it's not what the chart said? I always found debating such tortured logic a brief but entertaining use of time when lining up to get lunch in the trader's cafeteria. To the surprise of my FX trader if not to me, the technical analysis trading account was unprofitable. In explaining the result, my Kool-Aid drinking trader even accepted partial responsibility for at times misinterpreting the very information he was analyzing. It was along the lines of that he ought to have recognized the type of pattern that was evolving but stupidly interpreted the wrong shape. It was almost as if the results were not the result of the faulty religion but of the less than completely faithful practice of one of its adherents. So what use to a profit-oriented trading room is a fully committed chartist who can't be trusted even to follow the charts? At this stage I must confess that we had found ourselves in this position as a last-ditch effort on my part to salvage some profitability out of a trader I'd hired who had to this point been consistently losing money. His own market views expressed in the form of trading positions had been singularly unprofitable, so all that remained was to see how he did with somebody else's views. The experiment wasn't just intended to provide a “live ammunition” record of our in-house technician's market insights, it was my last best effort to prove that my recent hiring decision hadn't been a bad one. Sadly, his failure confirmed my earlier one and I had to fire him. All was not lost though, because he was able to transfer his unsuccessful experience as a proprietary trader into a new business advising clients on their hedge fund investments.
Simon A. Lack (Wall Street Potholes: Insights from Top Money Managers on Avoiding Dangerous Products)